Book reviews 79

France have for several years advocated the GPGconcept in the international community and, follow-ing an intergovernmental agreement signed in April2003, established an International Task Force onGlobal Public Goods headquartered in Stockholm.One of the editors/authors of this book (Le Goul-ven) has joined its Secretariat.

In summary, this new UNDP book is a worthy suc-cessor to the original, but in taking on the difficult andimportant question of how to improve the provision ofGPGs, it attempts to crack a tough nut that will takefurther work and effort to resolve satisfactorily. TheUNDP, however, is to be thanked for helping to pointthe way.

References

Dalrymple, D.G., 2003a. Impure Public Goods and AgriculturalResearch: Some Concepts, Views, and Issues, Office ofEnvironment and Science Policy, Bureau for EconomicGrowth, Agriculture, and Trade, US Agency for InternationalDevelopment, Washington, DC, July.

Dalrymple, D.G., 2003b. International Agricultural Research as aGlobal Public Good: A Review of Concepts, Experience andPolicy Issues, Office of Environment and Science Policy, Bureaufor Economic Growth, Agriculture, and Trade, US Agency forInternational Development, Washington, DC, July.

Kaul, I., I. Grunberg, M.A. Stern (Eds.), 1999. Global PublicGoods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century. OxfordUniversity Press, New York and Oxford (published for theUnited Nations Development Program).

Dana G. DalrympleOffice of Environment and Science Policy

Bureau for Economic GrowthAgriculture and Trade

US Agency for International DevelopmentWashington, DC, USA

E-mail address: ddalrymple@usaid.gov(D.G. Dalrymple)

doi: 10.1016/j.agecon.2003.11.002

Agricultural Policy Reform—Politics and Processin the EU and US in the 1990sWayne Moyer and Tim Josling (Eds.), Ashgate Pub-lishing Limited, Aldershot, England, 2002, 271 pages,hardback, US$ 74.95/£ 42.50, ISBN 0-7546-3050-1

In 1990 Moyer and Josling publishedAgriculturalPolicy Reform—Politics and Process in the EC andUSA (Iowa State University Press, Ames). The presentbook uses the same theoretical framework as beforeto analyse more recent steps in agricultural policy re-form, including the 1992 EC CAP reform (MacSharryreform), the 1999 EU Agenda 2000, the 1996 US FAIRAct (Farm Bill), and the 1994 Uruguay Round Agree-ment on Agriculture (URAA). The book is thus muchmore than an update or a rewrite—it introduces a sub-stantial amount of new material, much of which drawson personal interviews with key individuals involvedwith making these reforms turn out the way they did.

The theory used to explain the selected agriculturalpolicy reform initiatives draws on models of rationalchoice, public choice, organisational process, govern-ment politics and partisan mutual adjustment (mud-dling through). Elements of each theoretical modelare used to explain different aspects of the processof reaching the particular decisions embodied in theMacSharry reform, the Farm Bill, and the URAA.The government politics model tends to be used toexplain what otherwise cannot be explained. Thatmodel highlights the bargains and compromises thatmake a policy decision possible and “how policy co-herence is often sacrificed for political acceptability”(p. 15). The process is described as reaching a del-icate balance, with more and more elements tackedonto the original proposal for reform until there isenough to placate the demands of a sufficient numberof interest groups. It could be tempting to dismiss theuse of the government politics model by saying “ofcourse, that’s how politics works, give me some morerevealing insights”. Its use in this book, however, isvaluable because it helps to sort through and clarifywhat compromises were struck at what stage in theselected policy development processes.

Individual decisions are attributed to the need toresolve crises while faced with critical deadlines. TheMacSharry reform became necessary when agricul-ture was subordinated to broader national interests inthe Uruguay Round, combined with the need to con-trol agriculture spending and the looming expirationof fast track negotiating authority in the US. Agenda2000 is largely seen only as a continuation of theMacSharry reform. The 1996 Farm Bill became lawpartly because it included provisions that would orig-inally have reduced spending in the face of a budget

80 Book reviews

crisis, and legislation was needed before spring plant-ing was to start. Reaching the URAA is ascribed tothe threat of the whole Uruguay Round foundering ifa series of compromises on agriculture had not beenagreed between the EC and the US at Blair House in1992 and 1993. Altogether, these realities are sober-ing for those who imagine policy change as a neatlyevolving process, motivated by solid estimates ofincreases in the common weal.

The book makes much of what it calls paradigmchange. The ‘dependent agriculture’ paradigm is beingreplaced by the ‘competitive agriculture’ or the ‘mul-tifunctional agriculture’ paradigms. That society’sview of agriculture in Europe and North Americais changing seems a valid observation. However, itdoes not amount to shifting agricultural policy to anew paradigm in the Kuhnian sense (The Structure ofScientific Revolutions). This is all the more so whenone considers the many areas in which agriculturalpolicy has not undergone reform. The book deals withexamples of policy change in only a few commoditysectors in the EU and the US, and points at commoditysectors where change has been much smaller (sugar,dairy). The outcome of the 2002 Farm Bill process inthe US also helps to undermine the notion of the pol-icy paradigm having shifted away from ‘dependentagriculture’. The 2002 Farm Bill would seem to re-duce the generality of the findings in this book, unlessthe bill is projected as a continuation of the 1996 FarmBill and subsequent laws. After all, one of the themesof the book is that large ongoing payments to farmersin the EU and the US can be explained, whether thegenerosity dates to 1992, 1993, 1996 or 1999.

A few minor things could have been done differ-ently. The book’s focus on budgetary crises leads to apreoccupation with only budgetary outlays in figuresand text. This overlooks the other part of the policyeffort: the transfers from consumers in the form of a

price gap resulting from regulated prices, import bar-riers and export subsidies. If the paradigm is indeedshifting away from ‘dependent agriculture’, it wouldhave been useful to see how the shift might have af-fected such price gaps. The book repeatedly refers tosurplus production, apparently meaning any quantitythat is not consumed in the producing country at pre-vailing prices, i.e., a notion that takes self-sufficiencyas the norm. The book addresses the increasing intereston the part of producers to meet consumers’ demandfor food safety and quality attributes only at the veryend as an element of future policy pressures. It wouldhave been valuable to see this issue recognised as partof the shift to ‘competitive agriculture’ or ‘multifunc-tional agriculture’ already in the 1990s and what, ifany, role it may have played in making possible theselected policy reforms.

Editors have left some spelling and punctuation er-rors in the text, and some data sources look odd. Whilethe figures (graphs) are prepared with admirable accu-racy and completeness—perhaps with limited visualappeal to some—it seems the publisher subsequentlydecided to reduce them to near illegibility.

Overall this book offers an authoritative and insight-ful rendition of some key policy developments in in-ternational agriculture. It draws judiciously on otherresearch while contributing significantly to the under-standing of why EU CAP reforms, US Farm Billsand agricultural trade agreements have taken the shapethey have.

Lars BrinkAgriculture and Agri-Food Canada

Ottawa, Ont., Canada K1A 0C5Tel.: +1-613-759-7433

E-mail address: brinkla@agr.gc.ca (L. Brink)

doi:10.1016/j.agecon.2003.11.003